Singapore’s Muslim Population To Overtake Christianity’s By 2050

Islam continues to grow and will be the dominant religion in less than 50 years time.

Assuming the government doesn’t do anything about it, that is…

A study released on 2 April, 2015 by Washington-based think-tank Pew Research Centre included the religion trends of Singapore. Data from over 2500 sources was analysed over a period of six years, and this was what they found.

1. Islam and Hinduism are growing the fastest

Especially for Islam, which will overtake Christianity as the second largest religion in Singapore by the year 2050.

2. Singapore’s population

The report predicted that Singapore’s population would reach 7.9 million by 2050.

They also provided a breakdown of the trends of individual religions.

Freethinkers: Decrease from 16.4% to 16% by 2050

Buddhists: Face a decrease of 33.9% to 27%

Christians: Decrease from 18.2% to 17%

Muslims: Currently 14.3%, but will increase to 21.4%

Hindus: Increase from the current 5% to 10%.

But surprisingly (or not), the main reason for the rapid increases are not due to birth rates, but this:

“mostly because of migration from India and Malaysia”.

3. Well… maybe not

Dr Mathew Matthews, a senior researcher at Singapore’s Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) commented that the government had previously indicated a want to preserve the current racial ratios. Hence, Muslim and Hindu numbers may not actually meet their predictions.

Similarly, one cannot assume that people who migrate from India are Hindus and those from Malaysia are Muslims.

4. Shift in global patterns

Christianity is currently the biggest religion in the world, with over 2.1 billion followers worldwide. However, this will change by the year 2070 when Islam overtakes Christianity. Islam currently has about 1.6 billion followers.

What this means for Singapore

Singapore is blessed that they have racial tolerance. But with the religion balance set to change in the coming years, it becomes even more important that all Singaporeans, young and old alike, truly understand that importance of racial harmony.

Born in Hong Kong, grew up in Scotland and ethnically Pakistani, Adeel primes himself to be a multicultural individual who is an advent social media user for the purpose of learning and propagating Islam while is also a sports fan. Being an English teacher himself, he envisions a bright future for Muslims which he strongly believes can only be done with education.